


Golden and True

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, First Time, Masturbation, Police, Prison, Resolved Sexual Tension, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-05
Updated: 2013-09-05
Packaged: 2017-12-25 17:49:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/955952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brienne Tarth is nobody’s fool. Once she’s let Jaime Lannister get under her skin, coming to her senses may no longer be an option. But she can work with that. </p><p>Sequel to Ball and Chain</p>
            </blockquote>





	Golden and True

**Author's Note:**

> I want to give a huge shout-out to everyone who kudo’d or commented on “Ball and Chain,” and asked for a sequel. I took your plot suggestions under consideration and tried to give little nods to them all, even if your suggestion didn’t actually make it into this fic. (For everyone who is new here, I strongly suggest you read “Ball and Chain” first for, erm, maximum effect. :-P It can be found [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/954593)) I still know nothing about how police, prosecutors, prisons and parole boards actually work, and that’s my hat. I am proud to say I own nothing but the smut and feels.
> 
> I cannot get enough of this pairing in all its facets/variations/AUs/wonderfulness. There are too many possibilities to explore, so this fic will likely be the last stop on this particular route, as other ideas and plots beckon. So welcome aboard the Good Ship Jaime/Brienne for this cruise through the Cop!Brienne Lagoon, past the Jailbird!Jaime Reefs, and into Resolution Port.

Detective Brienne Tarth is a creature of habit. She has her day routine and her night routine. She rises at the same time every morning, goes for a run before work, puts in as many hours as the Fraud Squad requires, visits the gym three times a week, is in bed by ten every night. She does not go to sleep for another hour or so, though, for her evenings are no longer her own. 

In the evenings, Brienne makes love to Jaime Lannister. 

Or she has sex with him. 

Or she lets him fuck her. Or all three. 

Sometimes, when the mood is just right, she is the one who fucks him. 

It matters little that he is not there with her, except in her head, in her hands, his voice slithering words of desire and want into her ear. Self-assured, lewd, explicit words that make Brienne blush even as they make her gasp and touch herself the way she imagines he would touch her, the way he said he will touch her. 

Usually she imagines them on her bed, in her home, but sometimes she pictures him as he is in that moment, their agreed-upon time to be together until he gets out of prison. 

She imagines him lying on his bunk in his dark cell, the loaded silence of a building full of sleeping, shifting, scheming, rutting men, as though he were in a bubble, the lone man in a world of apes. A fall of moonlight through the small window or, more likely, a sweeping searchlight punctuates the silence like their joint grunts, their shared moans. 

She imagines Jaime’s head thrown back, his throat exposed to her lips, his chest heaving as his hand does what she imagines her hand doing. She imagines straddling him, one of her feet on the floor, barely room enough for them both on the narrow bunk, his hands going everywhere. She imagines his free hand opening and closing convulsively as he brings himself off thinking about her, imagines sucking his fingers one by one while she rides him with deliberate slowness, tight as his fist, and warmer. Her large body graceful as it never is during the day, when other people can see her. Completely in control but unraveling slowly from the inside, reflected in his glazed eyes as magnificent, as a giantess who takes him and brings him back to himself, and vanishes on the air, up the beam of light, when he comes down from his high. 

Brienne imagines Jaime wanting her there, and misses him, though they have never yet spent a single night together. Their bond woven of nothing but a few covert caresses ( _his finger on her cheek_ ) and many, many words exchanged furtively, when she should have been discussing the details of the case against Petyr Baelish, or Jaime’s bargain with the prosecutor, or the weather, or the stock market. Anything but the fact that she needs every ounce of her mental strength to hold herself back when she sits across from him in the interview room in the prison where he is serving his sentence, under the unblinking eye of a video camera, the eyes of her whole world trained on her slightest move. 

She accidentally sets a pen rolling across the table and his fingers twitch, whether to catch the pen or her hand she cannot be sure ( _she knows_ ), but she feels certain that the door will burst open and everyone will come pouring in to catch them in the act, her lieutenant, her partner Podrick, those assholes Hunt and Connington, her father, her grandmother, the girl who sat next to her in primary school, _everyone_. Certain that they all know how she spends her evenings, what she thinks about while she buys her morning coffee, on the treadmill, in the shower. 

She grabs the pen before it rolls off the table, making a bigger clatter than is strictly necessary, glances up, meets Jaime Lannister’s infuriatingly green eyes, his compassionate, knowing smile. Nobody knows but the two of them. 

Though she has tried often enough, Brienne cannot recall most details of their first conversation about _this_ , whatever this is. It happened two days after the night she was so certain he had been with her, she got up to double-check no man had used her toilet or let himself out of her apartment while she was briefly passed out. 

She would not have believed she could blush as much as she did that day, and remain conscious. Expected the rush of oxygenated blood to the head might have cleared her thoughts, but no dice. Kept her head bowed, certain there was a lip-reader watching them on camera, who would know what she was really talking about with Baelish’s file open in front of her. Spoke as quietly as she could, so quietly she had to repeat herself before Jaime’s eyes gleamed with gleeful understanding. He ostentatiously shielded his mouth from the camera with his hand while Brienne cringed, told her _exactly_ what he had been doing while she had been thinking about him and touching herself. Said nothing when she stutteringly suggested they should do it again, same time, same places, together, then talk about it. Said nothing for such a long moment that Brienne knew she was a fool, that she should get up and leave and have Podrick come to speak with him next time. 

“You bite your lip when something is making you angry,” Jaime said at last, his voice low, his eyes on her mouth. “Or horny.” She quickly stopped chewing on her lower lip. “I’ve noticed that,” he said, his smile almost palpable on the insides of her wrists, on the soft underside of her chin. 

She reminded herself to breathe, her heart speeding up regardless. “And what else have you noticed?” she asked, forgetting to keep her head down, to not look him in the eye.

His gaze slid from her face, down her neck, around her biceps, over her chest, telling her what he had noticed. “What are your nipples like?” came the brazen question. 

“They’re just… nipples.” She tried to spit the word out quickly, a dry pebble in her mouth. 

When she decided to broach this topic with him, she had not considered that actually talking about sex would not be easy for her, the words tripping over her tongue as though she were drunk. She would have to give this some thought, practice when alone so she could say the words in front of him, she decided. If he did not laugh in her face and tell her to forget it. She looked at him sharply, and he did laugh, open, wanting, wanting _her_ , and she thought that perhaps she was not a complete fool. 

The trial of Petyr Baelish is promising to rival Jaime’s own for headline-grabbing potential. After all, Baelish is charged with smuggling and distributing narcotics and human trafficking, with several conspiracies to commit murder thrown in for good measure. All the blood, guts and human misery the newspapers love. Jaime was only charged with corporate crimes which touched millions of lives. Nothing sexy there, nothing at all. Not for the first time in her career with the police force, Brienne is grateful that she will not have to participate in the media circus, happy to hide in her lieutenant’s shadow and just get on with building her case, marshalling evidence, making sure the testimony of their star witness against Baelish is up to snuff.

Which means, of course, continued visits to the prison to discuss said star witness’ statements. Three days before the trial is due to begin, Brienne faces Jaime for the last time across the table in the small glass room in the prison. She tries to inject some enthusiasm into the details of the upcoming proceedings, but Jaime remains morose and unresponsive. Dropping her voice to a whisper, she promises she will keep coming to visit him, though it will not be the same, they will have to sit in the big room with two rows of cubicles, separated by glass and telephone receivers, surrounded by other prisoners and their visitors. 

“It won’t be so bad,” she jokes weakly. “You will get out sooner than expected after you testify against Baelish. And anyway, we’ve barely touched as it is...”

He fixes her with his eyes, a dangerous set to his mouth. “You know, the first time I saw you,” he says slowly, his voice cruelly sharp, “that day in my office, I thought you were the biggest, most spectacularly unpretty woman I’d ever seen.”

Brienne does not wince, does not gasp, though she feels like he has just gut-punched her, like she should have seen this coming. Her voice barely wavers when she replies: “That’s very tactful of you. You could just say ugly, and be done with it.” 

“I could. I should. The only thing you have going for you are those eyes. A man could drown himself in your eyes.” He pauses while she wonders if this is it, game over, go straight to prison, do not cross Go or collect a prize. You bloody fool. 

His voice snaps her out of this thought like a slap. “You’re lucky I get hard just thinking about your tits, and your cunt, and your ugly face. That it’s only thinking of you that gets me hard lately.”

She stops biting her lip so suddenly her breath escapes in a _whoosh_ of air. “The first time I saw _you_ ,” she says, “I thought you were pretty as sin, and nothing but trouble. And I was right.”

He nods, leans forward. It takes her a moment to realize she cannot see his hands, and then she feels his fingers, touching the back of her left knee, as gentle as when he stroked her cheek weeks, lifetimes earlier, but more insistent, blatantly carnal. Her eyes flutter shut, her mouth falls open in a silent moan, and his fingers stroke the back of her knee through the thin fabric of her slacks. 

She does not even think how much of this is being caught on camera when he speaks: “Don’t you tell me we’ve barely touched. I do nothing but touch you every night. And then I dream of you.” 

He strokes her a second longer, then suddenly his hand is gone and she opens her eyes, certain she just imagined all that, that she will see her bedroom, her own hand in her pajama bottoms, night outside her window. Sees him drinking her in with his eyes, nostrils flared as though trying to catch her musk, a guard approaching on the other side of the room’s glass wall. 

“Remember that,” Jaime says. 

“I will.” She can barely manage the words. Her face feels like a furnace. “Me, too,” she adds nonsensically, trying to say ten things at once while the guard draws nearer like a messenger of doom. Jaime smiles and winks, says he will see her that evening, and the guard enters. 

That night, Brienne imagines them alone in the entire prison, imagines Jaime fucking her on the table, his hands cupping the backs of her knees, holding them wide apart, his face furiously focused on her, a hawk of desire, while the camera records though no one is watching. She peaks faster than she can remember ever having done before, and lies on her bed, breathless and certain that she will manage anything, the wait, the worry, the scornful eyes of strangers when eventually they are seen together, a beautiful man and an ugly woman walking down the street like normal people. For a few hours, at least, Brienne is invincible. 

The trial of Petyr Baelish runs its logical course, though his lawyers do their best to derail the proceedings and earn their retainers. Jaime testifies with the same unflappable cool Brienne found so irritating during their first two interviews. Gorgeous and righteous, with that patina of a penitent sinner, he has the jury eating out of his hand, Baelish staring daggers but powerless to do anything about it. Jaime catches Brienne’s eye while he is being led away from the courthouse, back to prison, lifts his handcuffed hands and waves, grinning. She forces her hands to stay still by her sides, lets her face tell him just what she would like to do to him just then, while Podrick gives her an odd, searching look. 

A week after Baelish’s sentencing, Brienne waits in line in front of the prison, alongside women with toddlers, concerned mothers and a handful of men (fathers, brothers, lovers), waits to see Jaime during regular visiting hours. The guard who checks her in looks right through her, as though he has never seen her before. Jaime and she cannot create a sense of intimacy in the crowded visiting room, the people in the cubicle to the left of them chattering in cheerful Spanish while on their right a half-deaf old woman shouts at her incarcerated son. They try regardless, talking about sex sometimes, Jaime making her blush and squirm in her chair with his words or wagging his tongue at her behind the glass barrier until she laughs and makes throat-slashing gestures. He suggests playfully she might smuggle a shovel and a lock-pick in to him, but she quells him with a look, tells him that if he thinks about so much as jaywalking once he is out… He makes placating gestures, assures her he will be too busy keeping her in a state of orgasmic bliss to go breaking the law ever again. 

They talk about other things, new topics for the two of them. Like family. Jaime’s pretty much abandoned him after his sentencing, as though being imprisoned for his family’s corporate crimes was worse than participating in said crimes like a loyal son and brother. So far as she knows, Tyrion is the only one who keeps in touch, though he has not been to visit Jaime, not wanting to risk arrest if he returned to the country. 

With some trepidation, Brienne asks him if he has any hidden skeletons she does not know about. He hesitates before telling her about his sister, about just how much fumbling in each other’s pants they did as teenagers, until their father sent Jaime to Harvard and his sister to a Swiss finishing school. Which tells you everything you already didn’t know about Tywin Lannister, Brienne thinks, grateful and relieved she will be unlikely to have to interact with Jaime’s relatives. 

She spends several days brooding on what he told her, decides that she can either trust his version of events, that the thing with his sister is over and has been for years, or she cannot. 

The following week she is back, facing him through the glass barrier, phone in hand. She does not miss the relief smoothing out the lines on his forehead when he sees her. 

“I have no skeletons,” she tells him. “I’ve led a very boring life.”

“Everyone has skeletons,” he replies. “They’re just things you’re ashamed of, the stuff you wish never happened.” Brienne is silent. Jaime prompts her gently: “I showed you mine…”

So she tells him. About her mother’s death. About her father’s not-so-secret opinion that she is wasting her potential on the force. About Podrick getting a transfer to Narcotics because Fraud bored him, and how much she will miss her resilient young partner. About the gay kid she had a crush on all through high school, whom she followed to the college of his choice, only to switch majors from English to Accounting sophomore year when she realized he was never going to go straight for her, could no longer face having so many classes with him. 

“Remind me to send him a thank-you card,” Jaime quips. “But for him, you wouldn’t have been around to arrest me and wait for me to get out. I’d be fucked, and not in a good way. Or do you think this guy might prefer a fruit basket?”

“Shut up, Jaime.” She cannot remember when using his name became so easy for her. 

Time passes, more slowly for Jaime than for Brienne. She can see the strain prison puts on him. He tries to keep himself busy with gym and books. She does her best to assure him she is missing him, she is waiting for him. He takes whatever comfort he can from that. 

They continue to sleep together while apart. 

One late afternoon, Hyle Hunt asks Brienne out to dinner while their squad room is emptying. She is not really surprised, refuses with what she hopes is kind firmness, is even less surprised when he does not suffer the rejection graciously. Does she have someone else? Brienne considers telling him to shove off, smiles and says that Hunt would not understand what she has. 

She feels not even a smidgen of surprise when the comments about her butchness and dykeness redouble in intensity after that. 

Brienne drives out of town to see her father. She does not go nearly as often as she should, the way he refuses to redecorate or change anything in her childhood home too much for her. As though he thinks that keeping her room the way she left it at eighteen is anything other than depressing, when she considers how naïve she was then, dreams of a boy who could not want her like stars in her eyes. How naïve she is now, dreams of a man she cannot be with enveloping her like a cocoon, isolating her from the rest of the world. 

It is less than three months before the end of Jaime’s sentence, and Brienne has no idea what they will do then. Other than talking about all the sex they will have, they have not made any concrete plans. She would like her father to reassure her, take her onto his knee and tell her everything will be all right. She grew too big for that when she was eleven, but she still misses it. But once she is there and her father is feeding her Sunday lunch like he thinks she has not eaten in a year, she realizes she cannot tell him. Her father worries about her working for the police, about her being all alone, what would he say is he knew she is in love with a convicted criminal who is too pretty for his own good and once had the hots for his own sister? 

She is not ashamed of Jaime. She _is_ terrified of seeing disappointment in her father’s eyes. She can see that he can see she is troubled, lets him prod her gently. Confesses she no longer enjoys her work, that her colleagues are getting insufferable and she misses her partner. Inevitable as the sunrise, her father tells her it is not shameful to change careers a second time, she did it once already, there are things she could do other than working for the police. 

Brienne throws up her hands, exasperated at herself: “Dad, this is what I am!” She sounds like a petulant child. She thinks of Jaime’s finger on her cheek, his smiles, the way he speaks like he knows her yet listens intently to everything she tells him.

Her father takes her hand gently, smiles his all-understanding, all-condoning smile. “You are more than just a police officer, Brienne.” 

She knows then that there is nothing she could do to make him think less than the world of her, but she decides to wait and see how things pan out with Jaime before she brings her father into it. 

Two months before Jaime is due to get out, Brienne informs her lieutenant of her decision to resign from the police force. He gives her an assessing look, asks if this has anything to do with the private visits she has been making to Jaime Lannister in prison. 

Of course. Everybody knows. There is no such thing as a secret. She considers telling him about Pod, about Hunt, about the strain of putting away people like Petyr Baelish and then reading in the papers how well people like Tywin Lannister are doing with their overseas assets. She settles for: “Yes, sir, it does.”

He asks her if she has taken a giant, flying leap away from her good senses, even thinking about shacking up with an ex-con. 

“Possibly,” she says. If _he_ will shack up with _me_ , she does not say out loud. “That is why I wish to resign.”

They go back and forth for a while, but in the end the lieut cannot stop her. Or, as he puts it, “Shoot yourself in the foot if you want, it’s your life.” 

“Thank you, sir.” 

He eyeballs her, the silent warning not to get too cocky while she still works for him clear as day. 

Six weeks before Jaime’s scheduled release, Brienne meets with Catelyn Stark, for whose small accounting firm she worked before becoming a police officer. Catelyn is delighted to have Brienne back. She has aged noticeably with the strain of running the firm alone since her husband’s death. Brienne comforts the widow as well as she can, thinks with relief that at least Jaime and she will not starve while they figure out where they stand. He has no money of his own, his family having cut him off when he went to prison. Brienne suspects he has no idea how to find or hold down a job that is not handed to him on a plate. He has always been the golden boy. It will be hard for him, even without the adjustment to life outside. 

She tentatively broaches this topic next time she visits Jaime, tells him in a businesslike manner he has a place to stay when he gets out, with her, and that she will help him figure out what kind of job he can realistically find, fresh out of prison, that would also be a job he would want to do. 

Jaime stares at her when she finishes this carefully prepared monologue, smiles one of his crooked smiles that go straight to Brienne’s stomach, chest, throat. “All that _and_ I get to see you naked at last.”

“Jaime.”

The smile does not let up, and neither does Brienne’s feeling of an invisible fist squeezing, squeezing her insides. “I could get used to you saying my name like that,” Jaime says.

“Or you could try saying my name like that,” she counters. He is starting to rub off on her. The thought instantly makes her blush.

He watches the red spread up her neck before he complies, stretching her name out like taffy, rolling the R deliciously. Brienne gets honest-to-god goose bumps, tells herself to remember this the next time she feels self-conscious or anxious about the future. 

There is less than a month to go when Brienne notices the black car with tinted windows parked outside her apartment building every evening and morning. She marches right up to it, boiling with anger, knocks on the window until the two men inside are cowed into lowering it. Fixes them with the scowl that served her as well as her muscles when dealing with violent drunks during her days in uniform, tells them in no uncertain terms to tell Tywin Lannister to leave his son and her alone. Points at the gaggle of children in front of a neighboring building, tells the goons she will arrest them for loitering in front of a primary school if she ever sees them again. Feels deeply gratified when they peel out and vanish before she has finished crossing the street back to her building. If the Lannisters keep her under surveillance thereafter, she does not notice. She is certain they do, does not mind so much as long as they are discreet and do not bother her or Jaime. 

Podrick comes to see her on her last day as a police officer, offers to drive her home. Brienne would rather go home alone with her thoughts, but suspects this is Pod’s way of saying goodbye. He looks different, younger and twitchier than when she was his partner. He is wearing a leather jacket and has an earring. Brienne suspects he is doing a lot of undercover work for Narcotics, hopes he will not make the mistake of getting hooked on anything for real. 

They drive in almost total silence until Podrick bursts forth with: “You can’t leave! You love being a cop!”

Brienne is both touched and saddened to realize he has been missing her too, and she never noticed because she was too busy missing him and resenting him for leaving her alone with Hunt and the rest of the asshole brigade. 

“No, Podrick,” she replies gently. “I _like_ being a cop. Or at least I did. I also like being an accountant. My priorities have changed, that’s all.” This is easier to say than telling him what ( _whom_ ) she does, in fact, love.

Podrick chews this over, says with unconcealed misery: “Now I’ll never see you again.” 

Brienne touches his forearm briefly. “We’ll see each other. I will call you. We’ll have lunch, and you will regale me with tales of tweakers and pushers.”

“You won’t call. People always say they’ll keep in touch, but they never do.”

Brienne does not point out that is exactly what he did as soon as his transfer came through. “Podrick. I will keep in touch. I promise.”

He is silent for nearly a whole minute. “OK.” 

Brienne never thought she would smile so sincerely on the day she ceased to be Detective Tarth. 

Jaime disregards all of her advice on how to handle his parole board. He snarks more than Brienne thinks is wise, and flirts with the only female board member more than Brienne is entirely comfortable with. When it is her turn to speak, she barely gets through her prepared speech about how Jaime is all reformed (which he has just shown is hardly true to those who know him i.e. her), and oh by the way, if there is any doubt of that, he will be staying with her for a while after he gets out, so she can keep an eye on him. That is what her speech boils down to, and Brienne wonders if she has done more harm than good with it, though Jaime smiles at her as she walks back to her seat, her back rigidly straight. 

Brienne notices the female board member watching her, braces herself for the look of pity or mockery she knows is coming. 

The woman rakes her eyes over Jaime, then looks back at Brienne with equal parts irony and sympathy. Brienne relaxes in her seat. I know, she wants to tell the other woman. My life was so safe and dull before I met him. 

At his insistence, Brienne buys new clothes for Jaime to wear when he is released. He refuses to wear the Armani suit he wore to his sentencing, to his first day in prison, tells her to burn it. She has it dry-cleaned and donates it to Good Will instead. Hopes that will remove the bad juju he clearly thinks is attached to the suit, that Jaime Lannister’s shed snakeskin will bring someone else a bit of good luck. 

Jaime is clean-shaven, still a little pale, looking like a jailbird and like a dream when he steps out of the prison gates, dressed in the jeans and shirt Brienne dropped off for him the previous day. They do not touch there or in her car. She drives, while he rolls down his window and hangs his head out of it like a dog, his eyes closed, the wind tugging at his hair. Brienne tries not to steal glances at him, fails. 

He takes in her small apartment, the couch with bedding piled on it. Brienne knows she is being a coward, but she will not push him. He does not owe her sex just because she was silly enough to wait for him. Anyway, she has been telling herself for weeks, he might _prefer_ to sleep on his own, a bit of privacy and freedom, even though her bedroom is just on the other side of a very thin wall. She gives him a set of keys, so he will not feel like she is his jailer, shows him to the bathroom, sees him look at her bed while they pass through the bedroom getting there. Lets him run a proper bath, soak the prison off his skin. When he is done and back in his new clothes, Brienne hands him a sheaf of takeout menus, tells him to order whatever he wants, goes to take a quick shower. 

She steps out of the bathroom, hair damp, dressed in baggy running pants and an old T-shirt, to find Jaime sitting on her bed. His head is down, his bare feet planted firmly on the floor like he thinks she will push him off the bed. He is rubbing his palms together slowly, and he is sitting on her bed, on _her bed_ , where he has never been, where he has been with her every night for so long Brienne cannot remember when she last fell asleep without his touch still on her skin. 

“I am not sleeping on that couch,” he says quietly, his palms rubbing, rubbing. “If you don’t want me, I will go elsewhere. But I am not sleeping on that couch alone.” He looks up at her then, just for a moment, and Brienne cannot believe him, cannot believe his face. How did he survive so long with that face, how did he survive in prison? How is he in her bedroom with _that face_? 

She drops her damp towel and goes to him. She is glad that her hands do not shake when she touches his hair, clean and bath-soft, when she puts her fingers in it and bends to sniff it. To smell _him_. His scent was always missing from their couplings, it was the one thing Brienne could never imagine correctly. She inhales him like she is trying to stun herself with the smell of his body, his hair, his neck. He stops rubbing his palms together, runs them slowly up her thighs, to her waist. Grips there as her fingers grip his hair. Presses his face against her abdomen, just below her breasts, and she breathes him, breathes him. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly against her stomach, and Brienne wants to laugh with the headiness of his breath, the vibration of his lips against her. “This is not going to last very long.”

Brienne leans to the side, tries to see his face. He avoids her eye, rubs his nose and mouth against her stomach. “You smell so good,” he mumbles, “and I’ve been living in sin with my right hand for over two years. This isn’t going to last long.” 

She does laugh then, cups his face, makes him look up at her. His face is raw with want and fear, and she knows she is smiling the smile that has been described as horsey in the past, the smile she smiles when she is happy and does not care who sees it. 

“I can’t wait,” she says truthfully, strokes his cheek with her fingers, leans in and runs the tip of her tongue over his cheekbone. Marking him. 

His arms tighten around her, around her thick waist, and he pulls her onto his lap. She can feel him, already hard, hard with the smell of her, the very hint of her skin. She reaches between them, more easily than she ever has done before with other men, more easily than even in her fantasies of him, and undoes his jeans. Whispers to him to let her do this. Strokes him, gratified to find he has not lied about his cock, remembers what delight he took in her blushes when he described it to her. 

He rubs her waist, her back, her shoulders, his forehead pressed against her throat, his breath making her T-shirt cling to her breast. He lips her nipple through the fabric, slips a hand under her shirt to cup her, to _squeeze_ , and she strokes, strokes him. Matches her breath, her movement, the gentle rocking of her hips on his thigh, to his breath, so her hand follows and precedes him to his peak. He muffles his groans against her neck, and she wants to tell him it’s all right, he need not worry about the man in the next cell hearing him any more, only her elderly neighbors, who can go straight to hell so far as Brienne is concerned. 

She plants kisses along Jaime’s jaw, waters them with her tongue while he breathes deeply, his hands going slack on her waist. Holds him, trying desperately to memorize how every inch of him feels, his smell, until she remembers he is there, with her, not a phantom who will vanish and leave her alone in a bed warmed by desire alone. 

She is still reveling silently in this thought when Jaime’s hands tighten on her waist and he is pushing her onto her back, tugging at her running pants impatiently. She registers that the fabric feels damp between her legs, that his jeans are halfway down his thighs, then her pants are off and Jaime is staring at her, naked underneath. 

Before she can wonder what he is seeing, legs too heavy and long to be desirable, blond hair too thick and wiry, he is pushing her legs apart, lifting one of her thighs onto his shoulder, and muttering in a voice both commanding and breathless: “You’re shit with words, you know. High time I discovered what you really taste like.” 

She spent two years and more imagining his tongue. All those nights are gone, licked clean when he kisses her belly, kisses along the muscles there, kisses her bush, nuzzles it, kisses her where she is already moist and getting wetter. Licks her as she had licked his cheekbone, with just the tip of his tongue, teasing her, till she is wriggling to get closer and making incoherent sounds. Then he chuckles, exactly as Brienne imagined, and starts to lick her like he will take all of her into his mouth and keep her warm there, making hungry noises and licking, licking. Brienne hates dancing but her hips are rolling and moving with him, with the hands that squeeze and caress her thighs, with his tongue, which is as muscular and wet and strong as she imagined, and more. He brings her close, so close. She would beg if she could remember the right words, wants to pull his hair for holding her back, doesn’t when he embraces her thighs and settles down like he plans to spend the rest of his days between her legs, and pushes her, lick by lick, kiss and gentle bite and kiss, until she is rising, arching, lifting, only his arms and his mouth holding her to the bed. She is certain she never sounded like that when just thinking about him. 

His head, heavy on her thigh, and his voice, thick with amusement and self-satisfaction, bring her back, remind her that she is finally not just imagining this. Remind her that Jaime Lannister is a smug bastard, and she can show him a thing or two. 

When they are finally, completely naked, Brienne remembers that day at the airport, how she had wanted to feel him bucking under her on the floor of the men’s room, to feel all of his slimness and strength push against her, unable to move her if she would not. 

She is astride Jaime now, covering his torso with hers, her knees planted and pushing down into the mattress on either side of him, her arms folded around his head, her fingers in his hair. She is taller, stronger, bigger than him, her body pressing him down, controlling their movement, driving them on, rejoicing in Jaime’s willingness to let her lead him, take him like this. She rarely imagined kissing him, and now she knows why. There is no way to describe to herself his eyelashes under her lips, his tongue in her mouth, his cheek on her chin, his teeth fastening on the skin of her throat, sharp enough to make her gasp and whimper his name. She understands now why they call this making the beast with two backs. She is truly invincible with him inside her, lifts herself off him a little, to feel the friction of his chest, to feel every point of contact with his skin, to let him thrust into her like he wants to, to drive her on as she drives him. Knows that he will let her take him like she sometimes imagined, her fingers inside him, his body hers to strum and possess. She need only ask. 

He bends his knees as far as he can with her weight on him, thrusts up, his breath hitched, and she cannot breathe for a second, so focused on the feel of his cock inside her. She was a fool to ever think her fingers and thoughts could approximate this. The small of her back, her hips, her thighs are starting to feel like jelly, she will shiver apart under his hands, his mouth, his teeth. 

“Roll me,” she gasps. Gets only a muffled grunt in response. Makes herself interrupt that delicious shivering to grab hold of Jaime’s jaw, focus on him as he focuses on her. “Roll me. Onto my back. Right now.”

She is stronger, but he is lithe, quick, and strong in his own right, and he rolls them both over as though they have done this before. Presses her into the mattress with the grin of a man on top of the world, drives into her with a kind of ferocious gentleness, a tender savagery. Her feet are pressed into the backs of his thighs, she is wide open to him, she is so vulnerable as she grips him, squeezes him, on her back under him. She would not trust anyone else like this. She says his name again, she has said it so many times at this moment but this is the first time he hears her, and he says hers right back, his hand skittering over her breast, tremors in his fingers. She wants to look at him till the end, cannot do it, her head rolling, her eyes closing despite her, out of her control, as her tight grip on herself slips from her fingers. She does look then, as the rolling, expanding waves start to subside inside her, she looks at him and he looks exactly as she imagined, his head thrown back, his teeth clenched around her name, his throat out of reach of her mouth even though she can still taste it, a halo of beauty and power around him, and she knows this is her orgasm talking but it’s true nonetheless. 

When she comes to, he is there, lying half beside her and half on her, his arm heavy and slack over her torso, his leg tangled with hers. She watches him, his head resting just by her shoulder, blond eyelashes over closed eyes, lips parted with breath, and she wants to scream and run and dance and just lie there forever with the knowledge that he will take even longer to recover than she did. For all that they talked about this so much for so long, like generals planning a campaign, they still learned each other, will learn more yet, everything talked about and so new. The sounds their throats and bodies made, the slap of Jaime’s thighs on her flesh, how sweat glistened and pooled on his stomach and on the insides of her thighs. Their smell, their breath, their skin. 

Brienne knows there will be other things to learn. The difference between fantasy and what one talks about, and actual living. Tempers, moods, habits. She strongly suspects Jaime is a slob, and lazy as a male lion, happy to let the female do everything. She will manage this, or accept it and move on. 

She wants to say the word love, doesn’t. Doesn’t want him to think she is only saying it because they finally shared a bed with all of themselves, not just their thoughts and desires. It can wait, she will say it when the word feels so ripe it falls from her tongue on its own. Undoubtedly while doing something ridiculously ordinary, like loading the dishwasher. She smirks at the thought. 

“Show me how you did it,” Jaime says without opening his eyes and Brienne nearly screams. 

“You’ve been watching me watching you, haven’t you?” she asks, blushing furiously. 

“My eyes were closed,” he replies, blinking with an unconvincing show of innocence. “Show me how you used to think about me.” 

Brienne stares at him. He smiles, that slow, knowing smile that slides all the way down her spine. “I can lend you a hand, if you want.” 

He runs his finger down her cheek, her left cheek, and she has to close her eyes as the memory of their first real touch quakes through her. Gasps as he kisses her throat, licks the spot he bit earlier, his tongue massaging the soreness, his finger now tracing her collarbone, down to her breast. Her hand slips toward the insides of her thighs as though his words were magical commands. He watches her bite her lip, her fingers start to move in a way her body worked out to fill his absence.

“This’ll be some story to tell our kids,” he says as he caresses her and she caresses herself, his voice laced with a chuckle and the first hint of breathlessness.

Brienne stops moving her hand, fixes him with what she can only hope is a terrifying glare. “ _What_ kids?”

“Oh, you know,” he says, infuriatingly cheerful. “The half a dozen we’ll have if we keep at it like this. An epic story of how you arrested me, kept me under lock and key, then threw away everything to be with me and my awesome sexual powers.”

“Jaime. Shut up now.”

“Brienne. Make me.” 

So she tries. As she wrestles with him and he discovers she never admitted to a certain ticklishness around the ribs and waist, she has just enough presence of mind to reflect that it will take time to make this thing between them, whatever it is, real. She is hopeful.


End file.
